After the National Assembly at the end of 2024, the upper house largely adopted, by show of hands, this bill aimed at extending the use of meal vouchers for food shopping at the supermarket.
This text was to be examined in mid-December in the Senate if Michel Barnier's government had not been overthrown. But censorship pushed back the debate. Consequence: since January 1, 2025, it is no longer possible to buy food products that need to be prepared in the supermarket, unlike directly consumable products such as sandwiches or salads.
Hence the need to legislate quickly to restore this exemption. And the High Assembly did so, taking care to adopt the text in the same terms as the deputies, which puts an end to the parliamentary process and will allow rapid promulgation.
“It seems to me that we have here a welcome measure of simplification, extremely popular and entirely logical”, affirmed the Minister for Small and Medium Enterprises, Véronique Louwagie, satisfied with this definitive adoption which will make it possible to put “an end to the most quickly as possible to the situation of uncertainty and embarrassment that consumers are experiencing today.
“This is excellent news for the purchasing power of the French,” reacted the Federation of Commerce and Distribution (FCD), its general delegate Layla Rahhou estimating that the measure “allows employees, who partly finance their meal vouchers, to freely choose where they use them, whether in our supermarkets or in the catering industry.
“Emergency”
The debates revolved a lot around the duration of this exemption: should it be extended until the end of 2025 or the end of 2026?
The National Assembly opted for a two-year extension. But in committee, the Senate, dominated by the right, proposed limiting it to one year, calling for an in-depth reform of the “restaurant ticket” by the end of 2025 to adapt it to changing uses, linked in particular to the development of teleworking; while taking into account the opinion of restaurateurs, who are opposed to this enlargement.
Finally, pressed by the emergency, the senators agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to align themselves with the version of the National Assembly.
“If we choose a different date for the Assembly, we will leave on a legislative shuttle… Whereas if we vote for a compliant text, we will be able to open the file in depth tomorrow with a view to a reform”, said justified the centrist Nadia Sollogoub to the AFP.
Les Républicains rapporteur Marie-Do Aeschlimann recognized that “urgency outweighs principle”, calling for this delay not to “slow down the reform” of meal vouchers desired by many stakeholders and parliamentarians.
The minister went in the same direction, calling for a rapid entry into force while giving some guarantees to parliamentarians on a major reform of the “restaurant ticket”.
“My objective is that we can present the broad outlines of the meal voucher reform this summer, in order to establish clear perspectives for all the stakeholders concerned with a view to effective implementation in the months that follow. “, she assured.
Some feared a “perpetuation that does not speak its name” with this deadline, like the socialists and the Macronist Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne. “There cannot be on the one hand work over two years and at the same time a commitment to work quickly to reform the system,” he warned.
